There’s usually something surprising about any piece of PR for a new Black Dice album that finds its way to my inbox. But the band’s squeaks and squeals always seem to stay fresh and innovative, I suspect due to Black Dice’s ever-morphing aesthetic and multiple experimental personalities over their 15 years together. They met at the Rhode Island School of Design in ’97 and formed a harsh thrash-noise band—because that’s what you did in design school in the late 90s—but soon they skipped off the deep end into 30-minute, loud-soft noise epics and have now moved to relatively structured, beat-oriented experimental “rock.”
In honor of the trio’s newest effort, Mr. Impossible—which drops April 10 on Ribbon Music—today’s 12 O’Clock Track is the album’s opener, “Pinball Wizard.” Beginning with a dark, fractured almost-sci-fi rhythm that includes thick, sustained psychedelic guitar lines, the track flips into popping, peculiarly funky industrial beats, which carry it till the end. It’s both dazzlingly weird and accessible, a balancing act Black Dice have been pulling off more and more often on their past couple of albums.